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SPEECHES .jIII 

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HON. REVERDY JOHNSON, 

OF MARYLAND, 



ON 



THE MILITARY RECONSTRUCTION BILL; 



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// / DKLITERED 



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IN THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES, 



FEBRUARY 20 AND MARCH a, 1867. 



WASHINGTON: 

PRINTED AT THE CONGRESSIONAL GLOBE OFFICE. 

1867. 



RECONSTRUCTION. 



Tho first of the subjoined speeches was made 
by Mr. Jonx.sox on the 20th of February, 1867, 
on what is Icnown as the Sherman military re- 
construction bill. At that time he had become 
satisfied that, if that measure was not adopted, 
or if adopted, the South should not accept it, 
their lands would probably be declared confis- 
cated, and they thereby reduced to absolute 
poverty. The Sherman bill was an amend- 
ment to one that had previously passed the 
House, and in Mr. JoHXSOx's opinion was 
much less objectionable. He consequently 
voted for it ; but stated at the time that if 
adopted he should vote against the bill on its 
final passage. 

At that time he hoped that-better terms might 

be obtained for the South. But upon finding 

what seemed to be the evident determination 

of the House to exact harsher terms than were 

contained in the Sherman bill, if that was de- 
ft 
feated in the House, he endeavored to persuade 

such of its conservative members as he felt 
himself at liberty to advise with to adopt it. 
If this had been done, the most objectionable 
features of the bill as it finally passed would 
not have been in it. His persuasions, however, 
were fruitless. The conservatives deemed it 
their duty, and in this they no doubt were sin- 
cere, to vote against the amendment, and their 



vote with that of the extreme radicals of the 
Republican members, acting under the lead 
of Hon. TuADDEUs Stevens, defeated it. The 
result was what Mr. Johnson apprehended, 
the adoption by the House of what is called 
the Shellabarger amendment, rendering the 
bill much more objectionable. So amended, it 
passed the House and was returned to the 
Senate. 

When Mr. Johnson made the speech of 
the 20th of February he had become satis- 
fied that if the bill, as amended, was not 
passed, a much severer one would follow. 
It was under this impression, as will be seen 
by the speech, that he spoke and voted for the 
measure. In so doing he consulted with no 
one, political friend or opponent. He acted 
entirely on his own judgment of what he be- 
lieved to be his duty to the country as well as 
to the South. He believed that if the bill 
failed, ruin would be the fate of the South ; 
and that in that fate the entire country would 
greatly suffer. He wished, too, in taking the 
course he did, to have the South see that in 
the opinion of one who has ever been true to 
her rights and zealous to maintain them, that 
their escape from destruction depended upon 
their accepting in good faith the bill. 

When the speech of the 2d of March was 



delivered Mr. Johnson had in the interval 
between the 20th of February and that date 
received information upon which he relied 
that a majority of the southern people con- 
curred with him in opinion, and were prepared 
to accept the measure as the only one prom- 
ising to rescue them from their present anom- 
alous and, as they and he believe, unconstitu- 
tional condition. And he is now convinced, 
if the terms of the bill are fully comj^lied with, 
that the southern States at the next session of 
the present Congress will have their repre- 
sentatives in both branches, when their rights 
and interest will hereafter be maintained and 
promoted, and the Union once more be what 
it was before the late insurrection, a result in 
which all patriotic men North and South will 
rejoice. 

Wednesday, February 20, 18G7. 

The Senate having under consideration the bill 
(11. R. No. 1143) to provide for the more efficient 
government of the insurrectionary States — 

Mr. JOHNSON said: 

Mr. President : I have felt a solicitude 
for the condition of the country consequent 
upon the exclusion of the southern States 
from their right of representation in this body 
that I want words to express. The view that 
I have entertained is that in their present 
condition they are entitled to be represented. 
But the Congress of the United States, from 
the termination of the rebellion to the present 
time, have taken a different view, and I have 
lost all hope of seeing them at an early day, 
if at any day, with the consent of Congress, 
reinstated in their original condition. Beside, 
the interest, the vital interest, which the people 
of the South necessarily have in the present 
state of things, the interest of the other States 
is almost as great. As long as it continues, 
more or less will the reputation of the country 
suffer, and more or less will its material inter- 



ests suffer. I have been, therefore, from the 
first, ready to agree to any proposition which I 
believed would have the effect to bring the south- 
ern States back, however much I may be op- 
posed to the conditions which might be exacted 
of them. Nothing can be worse than the state in 
which they are now placed ; desolation around 
them ; all rights denied them of a political 
character; and on the floor of the Senate, to 
say nothing of another branch of the Govern- 
ment, their character as men has been aspersed 
in terms which have caused me nothing but the 
deepest regret. I think I know that they are 
not deserving of such aspersion. I think I 
know that the descendants of the men of the 
South, who upon so many occasions battled on 
the field for the honor and glory of the coun- 
try, and contributed so much to the success of 
our civil government, cannot be such men as 
some of the members of Congress have desig- 
nated them. I wish them here in our midst, 
to show by their presence that in all particu- 
lars, moral and political, intellectual and 
Christian, they are our equals. The very bat- 
tles they have waged in seeking to destroy the 
Government exhibited deeds of valor of which 
Rome in her proudest days might have boasted. 
If I had my own way I would at once receive 
them in this Chamber, with a heart full of con- 
viction that they would be true to their duty 
to the country, and that they would promote 
its permanent interest. 

But I have not my way. I am obliged to 
acquiesce in the decision of the majority of 
Congress, however erroneous or unjust I may 
think that decision to be, provided I believe 
that it will end in a comparatively short time 
in restoring the southern States to the brother- 
hood of States. I am unwilling that this Con- 
gress shall adjourn without the adoption of 
some measure that holds out a hope, however 
distant, tliat this may be the result of our delib- 



orations; and believing that this will be done 
by the adoption of the measure before you I 
shall give it my vote, not because I approve 
of it in the abstract or in the particular, but 
because I think I see in it a mode of rescuing 
the country from the perilous predicament in 
which it is now placed. 

Mr. President, if there be a feeling which 
sliould animate the heart of every American, 
it should be one of generosity, magnanimity, 
and charity for the men who, although they 
sought to break asunderthe cords of the Union, 
are now .looking with solicitude to their being 
reinstated. If there be a feeling wliich should 
animate every American citizen, it is that we 
should be. and at the earliest period, a people 
one and indivisible, demonstrating to the world 
that however alarming the few last years may 
have been, and however they were calculated 
to cause the lovers of constitutional freedom 
to (Hspond, the time has come, or the time 
will speedily come, when the feelings conse- 
quent upon that effort will have subsided, and 
we shall be brought together again and be seen 
in the undisturbed exercise of the duties im- 
posed upon us, and exhibiting to the world a 
people great in war, and a people capable of 
being in the end, the war terminated, as great 
in peace. 



Saturday, March 2, 1867. 

A message was received from the President 
of the United States, returning, with his ob- 
jections, the bill (H. R. No. 1143) to provide 
for the more efiBcient government of the insur- 
rectionary States. 

The PRESIDENT pro tempore. This bill 
is now to be reconsidered by the Senate ac- 
cording to the provisions of the Constitution ; 
and the question is. Shall the bill pass, the 
objections of the President of the United States 
to the contrary notwithstanding? 



Mr. JOHNSON. Mr. President, while doing, 
as I sincerely do, full justice to the motives 
of the President in refusing to sign the bill 
before us, I cannot but regret that he felt him- 
self compelled by a sense of duty to come to 
that conclusion, and I also regret the tone 
which his message in several portions of it 
assumes. It contains, as I think, some legal 
propositions which are unsound, and many 
errors of reasoning which upon examination 
will be found apparent. And above all do I 
lament the course he has thought it his duty to 
pursue, because I see, as I believe, that it may 
result in continued turmoil and peril, not only 
to the South, but to the entire country. I 
rise, therefore, for the purpose of stating very 
briefly, in addition to the reasons which I 
assigned when the bill was formerly before us, 
why I cast the vote which I then gave, and why 
I shall give the same vote now. [Applause in 
the galleries.] 

The PRESIDENT pro tempore. Order 
will be observed in the galleries, or they will be 
cleared. 

Mr. JOHNSON. I hope it will not for a 
moment be supposed by those whom I am ad- 
dressing that I am now governed, or was gov- 
erned before, by any desire or expectation of 
popular applause. My motives, if I know my- 
self, were and are pure and patriotic. I see 
before me a distressed, a desolated country, 
and in the measure before you I think I see 
the means through which it may be rescued 
and restored ere long to prosperity and a health- 
ful condition, and the free institutions of our 
country preserved. 

Mr. President, I have reached that period 
of life when I can have no other ambition than 
that of serving my country. During the whole 
period of our troubles I have hoped and be- 
lieved that the war would terminate success- 
fully, and that that accomplished, our forms of 



6 



Government as devised by our fatliers v?ould ■ 
be even the more firmly established, securing 
to the States all the powers they possessed 
without dispute before the .war, and which 
they thought, as I think, cannot be exercised 
at all by the General Government, and secur- 
ing to that Government the powers granted it, 
which the States are equally incompetent to 
discharge. But we are now, though the war 
has successfully terminated, in a condition 
which fills every reflecting man with anxiety. 
Without examining the motives of our brethren 
of the South in attempting to dissever our 
Union and to establish a confederacy of their 
own, it is sufficient to say that in my opinion 
if they had succeeded the cause of constitu- 
tional liberty would for years, if not forever, 
have terminated. 

The effort, thank God, has fiiiled. The power 
of the Government under the providence of 
Heaveti has proved able to arrest and defeat 
it, and the South, as I believe, is willing in 
good faith and anxious to abide .by the result. 
The question to be decided is and has been 
from the period of the war's termination, how 
is the Government to be restored to its original 
integrity, and the States, as vital to that integ- 
rity, to be restored to their former constitu- 
tional condition? The opinion entertained by 
me during the war, and since — often expressed 
in the Senate and upon other suitable occa- 
sions — is that the moment the insurrection was 
suppressed the States where It prevailed re- 
mained In the Union with all the rights and 
obligations before belonging to them, and that 
the General Government had no power to limit 
these in any way whatever ; that the authority 
to change their government belongs exclusively 
to their own people, subject only to the restric- 
tions expressed or implied of the Constitution 
of the General Government; that this freedom 
from control is applicable to every department 



of that Government. In my view, therefore, 
they were and are as entirely without the juris- 
diction of the Executive as of Congress. The 
authority delegated to Congress to preserve our 
Institutions, State and Federal, by suppressing 
insurrections aimed at their existence cannot 
be even tortured with any show of plausibility 
into an authority to destroy them. 

I consequently- think that no terms can be 
exacted, either by the President or by Congress, 

as conditions to be performed before they are 

* 
entitled to representation in the Senate and 

House of Representatives. And in -nothing 
that I have ever said or written upon the sub- 
ject have I attempted to justify upon constitu- 
tional grounds the authority of the Executive 
to enforce conditions upon the States as pre- 
liminaTy to their right of representation. The 
ground upon which I have maintained and do 
maintain the constitutionality of the present 
State governments of the South is that^the 
people of such States have, since they were 
exacted, complied with them and framed their 
constitutions accordingly. The late and the 
now President took a different view. They 
both seem to have supposed that these States 
were not within the Union so as to be entitled 
to representation in Congress until they should 
comply with such terms as they might stipulate, 
and that they had the authority, without the 
sanction of Congress, to require them. 

In my judgment, in this they were right in 
part, but not in the whole. They were right 
in holding that the States are entitled to rep- 
resentation; but not because they had the au- 
thority to impose the conditions which they 
exacted, but because the people had adopted 
them. It is unnecessary, on this occasion, to 
state what those conditions were. In my opin- 
ion they were as unconstitutional as any to be 
found In the present bill. Congress, however, 
from the first has been of opinion, as their 



conduct shows, that notwithstanding the peo- 
ple of these States fulfilled these presidential 
conditions, they were not restored to the right 
of representation until Congress should so 
declare, and this, as manifested in the recent 
congressional elections, seems to be the pres- 
ent judgment of the country. This being so, 
how are the States to be restored? It can 
only be done in fact upon their submitting to 
the conditions which Congress may require. 
Failing to do so, they must remain as they are, 
liable to taxation without representation, and 
to be governed, in all respects, not only with- 
out but against their will. ^ 

I impute no improper motives either to Con- 
gress or to the Executive, the past or the pres- 
ent. I. accord purity of purpose and patriotic 
designs to both; but with all becoming respect 
I dififer in opinion from both. I seek, how- 
ever, as vital to the prosperity of the country, 
if not to the continuing existence of our insti- 
tutions, the complete restoration of the Union ; 
and I now see no way of accomplishing it but 
through the measure on your table. 

Mr. President, we are now, in my opinion, 
by the course which Congress (though very 
much to my regret) deems it its duty to pursue, 
in a state of quasi war. Our condition is virtu- 
ally revolutionary. Ten States ai'e held and 
treated as conquered provinces, and are so 
held and treated because, in the judgment of 
the dominant party, they are enemies of the 
Union and of the Government. This state of 
things is full of peril to all we should hold dear. 
It must be arrested, or our Government will 
sooner or later be destroyed. So thinking, 
were I to hesitate a moment longer to give my 
sanction to a measure which promises, as I 
believe the one upon your table does, to ter- 
minate it, I should be false to the true interest, 
honor, and very safety of the nation. We are 
told in the message before you (and quotations 



from a recent decision of the Supreme Court 
are given in support of the opinion) that such 
military force as this bill provides cannot be 
constitutionally resorted to, the war having ter- 
minated. As a question of law I concur in 
that view. But if that question should be 
presented to that court hereafter, when will it 
considei^e war terminated ? It may hold that 
to be a political question, to be decided ex- 
clusively by the political department of the 
Government, by Congress, to whom is alone 
intrusted the power to declare war and to sup- 
press insurrections. I am therefore not pre- 
pared to say that that high tribunal would rule 
this bill to be unconstitutional, although they 
may think as men that the war is at an end in 
fact, and on that account regret as I do this 
legislation. But neither upon that ground nor 
upon any other is it more obnoxious to constitu- 
tional objection than are the civil rights and 
Freedmen' s Bureau bills. These, both of them, 
subject the southern States to military power as 
effectually in all particulars as the one before 
us; and the President (as he was in duty 
bound to do) from the first has enforced them. 
Indeed, the bill in question does not dififer at 
all from those referred to, except in a way 
which renders it in my opinion much less ob- 
jectionable. They established over the South 
military rule alone, providing no means for its 
cessatifjn, while this does provide means calcu- 
lated and intended to reinstate the South as 
States entitled to the same rights as the other 
States ; and when that is done there is of course 
an end to military rule by Congress. 

And, Mr. President, the light in which I view 
this bill, and which led me to sanction it, I am 
glad, though not surprised, to find is the light in 
which it is viewed by most of the reflecting and 
intelligent men of the South. I collect this from 
a portion of their public press, but more espe- 
cially from communications made to me in re- 



^ 



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gard to it by very many of the leading men of 
that section since I gave it my sui^port. They 
tell me it is their purpose to organize under 
it. They are taking lessons from experience. 
The constitutional amendment heretofore pro- 
posed to them, if they had adopted it, would, 
I firmly believe, before this have given them 
representation in Congress. Of that T have no 
doubt ; but they rejected it, and now to adopt 
it would not have that result. The bill which 
passed the Senate, if it had not been altered in 
the other branch, would have accomplished the 
same end upon terms less exacting than those 
incorporated into it by the House. To these 
alterations the Senate, though evidently with 
reluctance, gave their assent rather than aban- 
don the measure altogether. I concurred in 
that assent, and why ? Because I then believed, 
indeed thought I knew, that the bill failing, one 
of a much more harsh and unjust character 
would be adopted, one founded upon the hypoth- 
esis that the people of the South were conquered 
enemies, and their land and other property on 
that account liable to confiscation and for- 
feiture. 

Acting upon this conviction, I believed, unless 
the South was restored to the Union, laws of 
confiscation would be passed, and in such a 
form that I did not know, nor do I now know 
with anything like an assured oijinion, what 
would be the judgment of the Supren^e Court 
upon their constitutionality when the question 
was brought before it. I did, however, know 
that it could not be so brought without con- 
siderable delay, and that in the mean time with 
such a cloud over their titles the owners would 
not be able to obtain that credit which they 
now so much need to develop their industry, by 
mortgaging their lands or otherwise. And in 
this state of things, although the law might 
hereafter be declared invalid, the consequence 
would, in many cases if not in all, be total ruin ; 



and if eventually its constitutionality should 
be adjudged, the entire southern region would 
be surrendered to a colored population, the 
whites, our fellow-citizens, and who are now 
anxious to be with us again, be driven from 
their homes, made exiles in their native land. 
Under this impression no mere pride of opin- 
ion could I suffer to restrain me a moment in 
supporting a measure which I believed might 
avert so dreadful a calamity. Something to 
prevent it must be done. Party with me can 
have no influence when the safety of the coun- 
try requires in my judgment that it be disre- 
g^ded. If I know myself, and in this respect 
I think I do, I should hang my head in very 
shame if for the sake of mere party success 
I refused to give a vote in support of any 
measure which I believed involved -the safety 
of the country. 

Mr. President, I seek the restoration of the 
Union as it was prior, to the insurrection^ This 
I believe can be attained if the southern States 
will organize under this bill, and if it is faith- 
fully carried out by the President, and that I 
have no doubt he will do, if it becomes a law. 
When this is effected, and they are again with 
us, I do not doubt that all the restrictions now 
proposed and which are so obnoxious in my 
judgment, and so unnecessary and so unjust to 
the best men of the South, will in a very short 
period be removed. And then, as of old, during 
the struggles of the Revolution, and the wars 
of 1812 and 1846, we shall be found united 
as a band of brothers, in council, on the 
ocean, and on the field, seeking with equal 
zeal, valor, and patriotism to maintain the 
Government bequeathed to us by our fathers, 
to promote the national prosperity, and to uj:)- 
hold the rights and vindicate the national 
honor ; starting upon a career even more pros- 
perous than we have enjoyed in the past, and 
challenging more than ever the wonder and 



9 



admiration of llie world. Contenting m3'seir, 
therefore, with what I have now said, reserv- 
ing for a future occasion a more extended 
examination of the subject, should I deem it 
necessary, I shall do as I did before, cast my 
vote in favor of the bill, the objections of the 
President to the contrary notwithstanding. 

Mr. BuGKAi.EW having addressed the Senate, 

Mr. JOHNSON said: 

Mr. President: I have but a word or two 
to say in reply to the honorable member from 
Pennsylvania. He seems to suppose that the 
vote which I am about to give, and the one 
which I have already given on the measure 
before us, are not in accordance with the opin- 
ions I have heretofore expressed. He finds it, 
he tells us, impossible to reconcile them. He 
says he listened to some remarks of mine when 
the measure was formerly before us, and lluit 
they served to strengthen his own opinion upon 
the questions which it involves. He apparentl}' 
considers that consistency should compel me 
to vote now as I voted then. Mr. President, 
consistency in a public man can never properly 
be esteemed a virtue when he becomes satisfied 
that to preserve it will operate to the prejudice 
of his country. The pride of opinion, which 
more or less belongs to us all, becomes, in my 
judgment, in a public man a crime when in- 
dulged at the sacrifice or hazard of the public 
safety. It is true, sir, that I thought when the 
constitutional amendment was before us that it 
was obnoxious to serious constitutional objec- 
tions. I predicted then that the South would 
not ratify it; and at that time I thought that 
she should not. The prediction was verified. 
She refused to ratify it, and what has been the 
result? A measure still more severe has been 
adopted by Congress, and it is not in the power 
of the minority of this body, or of the other 
House, or. of the people for a period of two 
years successfully to resist it. Whether justly 



or not, whether originating In patriotic motives 
or not, he must be blind to the signs of the 
times who does not now see that there is a 
fixed determination in the dominant party of 
the country that the southern States .shall not 
be represented in Congress except upon such 
conditions as that body may impose. To resist 
this determination it is evident that the Pres- 
ident is powerless, and that the South will be 
unrepresented until Congress shall admit them. 

And the question for my decision is, what 
shall I do for the South in her present exi- 
gency and for the country? I should have 
rejoiced and should still rejoice if the recent 
elections should have so terminated as to have 
caused Congress to abandon its purpose and to 
have recognized what I believed to be the con- 
stitutional rights of the South. But they did 
not so terminate. On the contrary, they seem 
to sanction the policy of Congress. In this 
predicament what is a patriotic Senator to do? 
Is he to abandon all hope and make no eiTort 
to preserve sooner or later the rights of the 
South, or is he not bound to make such an 
effort? In my view he clearly is, and it is be- 
cause I so think that I now support the meas- 
ure upon your table. I flatter myself that the 
South do not doubt my friendship, and that they 
will be satisfied that in giving my support to 
this measure I have had their interest, in view. 
Mr. President, what will be their condition if 
they reject it. Harsher measures will probably 
■be resorted to. Confiscation of their lands and 
their distribution among the blacks and those 
called loyal whites, and this I fear may be done 
in a form which will render all attempt at legal 
redress fruitless. 

The Supreme Court in the prize cases in terms 
declared that the insurrection was a war carry- 
ing with it the incidents and consequences of an 
international war. One of these incidents is the 
right of the conqueror to confiscate enemies' 



10 



property. This right was exercised during our 
revolutionary struggle, and if the insurrection 
was a war (I do not think it was as far as this 
right is concerned) the United States may ex- 
ercise thatright. Should Congress, therefore, 
declare that the insurrection still exists, that 
the war is not ended, and that the citizens of 
the South are public enemies, and that on 
that account they confiscate their property, 
what may not the judiciary hold? I do not 
undertake to give the answer with anything 
like certainty ; but they may say that whether 
the war existed or not was a political question 
to be decided exclusively by the war-making 
power of our Government, Congress. In that 
contingency how hopeless would be the con- 
dition of the South. Her personal property is 
already swept away, every house is filled with 
mourning, all business enterprise destroyed, 
and that which alone remains, her lands, would 
share the same fate. And I am asked or ex- 
pected, though entertaining as I do this appre- 
hension, to abide by the views which I have 
heretofore entertained, and for the sake of 
consistency see the South involved in total 



destruction without extending a hand to pre- 
vent it. 

This, Mr. President, I cannot do; my judg- 
metit rejects it ; my heart revolts at it. The 
honorable member from Pennsylvania tells us 
that these considerations are not suited to the 
deliberations of this body, that I have mis- 
taken the forum of debate, and that they are 
only proper to be addressed to a popular as- 
sembly. In this I do not concur. When the 
conduct of Congress and the measures it may 
adopt are not influenced by popular opinion 
the body would sfon lose public confidence. 
f He also tells us that the opposite course which 
he is pursuing he is willing to submit to the 
judgment of the men of this age and of future 
ages. So am I, Mr. President, and this I do 
with all becoming confidence. With that honor- 
able Senator I am likewise content that ray con- 
duct on this occasion, and the motives which 
animate me shall be recorded in the permanent 
and enduring archives of the country, and I 
have no fear that with reflecting and patriotic 
men, North or South, my judgment or patriot- 
ism will suffer. 



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